Les Ballets Africains, a company performing native dance Guinea, will perform at Seattle's Benaroya Hall on Sunday, April 11, 2004 and at Tacoma's Pantages Theatre on Monday, April 12, 2004. Tina Potterf previews in the Seattle Times:

Les Ballet Africains to offer a display of music's roots By Stewart Oksenhorn for The Aspen Times

In its performances tomorrow and Wednesday at the Aspen District Theatre, the Guinean-based dance company Les Ballets Africains will perform works that date back to the group's inception in 1952.

Dance pieces from Guinea that are a half-century old may seem like the ultimate in exotic fare. But the company's managing director said audiences should see plenty of familiar moves in the performance.

"Anything you saw on MTV in the '80s, the urban rap dance - that comes right out of Guinea, Mali and Senegal," said Mamoudou Conde, who has been Les Ballets Africains' managing director for six years. He also manages two other Guinean performance troupes, Les Percussion de Guinee and Le Ballet Nacional Djoliba.

Guineans Sketch Their History, but Hipness Breaks the Spellby JENNIFER DUNNING for the New York Times

The fascination of the evening was the broad storytelling, sweeping across centuries of Guinean history, from the depredation of evil colonialists to the triumph of a fierce modern-day nurse in white as she shoos away knife-wielding female tribal elders intent on genital mutilation of young girls before marriage. In another segment, a predatory male and his frightened female victim flew through a magic dark forest populated by two large, cheeping monkeys; "the goddess of the genie snake"; and a group of what looked like albino gazelles.

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